What Makes a Demagogue? The Figure of the Rhetor in the Closing Years of the Peloponnesian War

Tomás Pacheco Bethencourt

doi:10.17951/k.2020.27.2.15-28

Abstract

It is usual to associate the word “demagogue” with bad political leadership. At worst, it is also usual to think about a leader that uses deception and feeds on the more primal emotions of the people to get what he wants. But, in reality, answering the question of what a demagogue was is far from easy. Thus, this paper hypothesizes that there is no substantial difference between a demagogue and a rhetor in Athenian democracy. As its method, the paper analyses the context of use of the term by the different actors as to shed some light on their intentions. First, the paper examines the concept of “demagogue” and how the term appears in the democratic tradition, by focusing on its usage in the works of authors such as Aristophanes, Lysias and Thucydides. Next, it refers to the way in which adversaries of Athenian democracy, especially deriving from philosophy, used the term. As this paper will show, there is a significant difference between the two usages, the former being descriptive and the latter pejorative. Finally, the paper concludes that both in the descriptive and pejorative sense, being a demagogue meant to be a rhetor, a leader of the demos .

Highlights

It is fairly commonplace to associate Athenian democracy with a “reign of demagogues”, especially by the end of the 5th century BC, when the Peloponnesian War was coming to an end
As Moses Finley puts it in his classic article Athenian Demagogues: “the demagogue is driven by self-interest, by the desire to advance himself in power, and through power, in wealth
The core of the matter here is that, from a democratic partisan’s viewpoint, the demagogues or rhetors were a fundamental part of Athenian democracy, and the consequences of their good or bad leadership had as much to do with their power in the assembly and the decisions they had to make while occupying a political office as it had to do with the power of the assembly itself

Summary

INTRODUCTION

It is fairly commonplace to associate Athenian democracy with a “reign of demagogues”, especially by the end of the 5th century BC, when the Peloponnesian War was coming to an end. Athenians preferred, following Melissa Lane’s account, more descriptive forms for referring to their political leaders, such as prostates tou demou (the person standing before the people), ho boulomenos (the one that takes the initiative) or hoi rhetores kai hoi strategoi (orators and generals) [Lane 2012: 182] This view counters the extended trend that claims that demagogos and demegoros were a common Greek designation for bad political leadership [Finley 1962: 7], at least outside the philosophical tradition. We can better understand why a negative connotation for demagogue is nowhere to be found in Athenian democratic tradition The rising of these “leaders of the demos” was expected, but encouraged, as proven by the institutional framework of the polis, which contemplated as a main political risk that any of these leaders accumulated an amount of influence and power so great that they would become tyrants. Finley himself recognises that “demagogues were a structural element in the Athenian political system” [Finley 1962: 19]

DESCRIPTIVE USAGE OF DEMAGOGUE

THE DEMAGOGUE AND THE ADVOCATORS OF DEMOCRACY

THE DEMAGOGUE AND THE STATESMAN

WHAT MAKES A DEMAGOGUE?

CONCLUSIONS